Posts Tagged review by Amy Steele
book review: Tomboy
Posted by Amy Steele in Books, Women/ feminism on September 22, 2014
Tomboy: a graphic memoir by Liz Prince. Publisher: Zest Books. Graphic/memoir. Paperback. 256 pages.
“A boy can be celebrated because of his personality and talents, regardless of how he looks. In fact, talent can make a guy attractive who may not be by traditional standards. But a girl is usually only popular if she looks good.”
An outstanding, contemplative examination of identity, status and fitting in. Liz Prince is a talented cartoonist who takes us back to her childhood to examine her choice and comfort in being a tomboy. At a young age, Prince rejects standard female looks and prefers to dress like a boy. Shiloh Jolie-Pitt anyone? She chooses to wear a hat, blazer, jeans and t-shirts to dresses and skirts. Of course she gets picked on in elementary school without really understanding why. She states: “I didn’t even know what a tomboy was until I started school and was expected to follow the “rules of gender.” She prefers what we consider boys’ toys and games and most of her role models were boys like Huck Finn, Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones. She wants to be a boy instead of a girl because even in elementary school she knew that boys might have it better than girls. Prince suffers intense bullying for not looking like the girl her classmates expected her to look like with long hair and soft edges. She plays on the little league baseball team and also joins a girl scout troop.
As Prince becomes a teenager she grows confused as she’s a girl who wants to be like a boy and dress like a boy but she’s not gay. She’s attracted to boys. This throws another loop in her quest for identity. Like many teens she struggles for acceptance and for a boy to like her. I wore pink in high school and never had a boyfriend so I can relate. She worries about puberty—getting her period and developing breasts. She’s extremely body conscious. She notes that she started feeling dislike for girls and their girly ways. “For boys, there seemed to be more options available: there were more ways to be a boy and still be accepted whereas the popular girls all seemed to be cut from the same cloth.” So true.
I always preferred skirts and dresses and still do. I still defined myself as a feminist in fifth grade. I don’t recall a lot of girls wearing dresses when I grew up but I did. It’s my style. It’s what I’m most comfortable in. When I wear jeans I just don’t feel like myself. But I had wavy hair, unruly hair in the 80s and most girls and teens had straight hair. I fought my hair for many years until my senior year when I gained a slight bit of self-confidence and started to go with the flow regarding my hair. Clearly many adults never wear skirts and dresses but wear makeup and clothes that accent their femininity. Outside of fancy events and modeling shoots, I’ve never seen Gisele Bundchen wearing a skirt. She’s generally in jeans. But no one would confuse Gisele for a boy with her long hair, curvy body and makeup.
Being critical only suits one’s own egoism. There’s not many ways to tell who someone is based on her personal style and looks. Don’t put people in boxes. Don’t be so quick to judge someone based on her appearance. It’s about personality, capabilities, desires and communication. The way someone dresses is completely personal expression and comfort.
Boys and girls accuse Prince of being a lesbian or not liking boys. “The stereotype of the butch lesbian has plagued me my whole life but I don’t dress like a boy to attract girls. I dress like a boy because it feels natural to me.” A friend of Prince’s mom, Harley, runs a zine and asks Prince to contribute. Harley is this “cool” childfree adult who takes an interest in Prince’s desire to be a graphic/ comic artist. She’s also the first adult to explain to Prince about societal expectations for boys and girls. Through Harley, Prince realizes that it’s not girls per se she dislikes but the way that our society expects girls to act and dress. Thus a young feminist is born. Prince changes to a more progressive school where she doesn’t feel so out of place with the other “misfits:” Goth kids, punk kids, a hippie, a nerd. She also does an internship at an art collective and meets some cool kids there.
Another graphic memoir that’s stand-out poignant and provocative is Ellen Forney’s Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me. This is en par with that in quality and meaning. Tomboy is a fascinating meditation on identity through fantastic cartooning style. Sometimes amusing. Often heartbreaking. Always honest. An important read for all ages.
RATING: ****/5*
–review by Amy Steele
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Zest Books.
Liz Prince will be reading at Trident Booksellers and Café on Thursday, October 23 at 7pm.
purchase at Amazon: Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir
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book review: The Story Hour
Posted by Amy Steele in Books on August 19, 2014
The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar. Publisher: Harper (August 19, 2014). Literary fiction. Hardcover. 336 pages. ISBN13: 9780062259301.
Disappointing. I liked the title and general premise– though I was semi-hesitant that a psychologist would befriend a patient. After a decade with my therapist, I had both his cell number and work number but we never socialized outside of scheduled appointments. As much as I considered him my friend I paid him to be such a confidant. I stopped two-thirds into The Story Hour when I realized I cared nothing for these characters. Not only did I not care but I learned very little about them. There’s hardly any character development and little plot.
It started off fairly interesting in that a therapist began treating an Indian woman who has been living in the states for six years after she tries to kill herself. I never got to the reason. This therapist, Maggie, is African-American and married to an Indian man. She’s also having a dispassionate affair with a white guy. She loves her husband yet keeps hooking up with this guy. She can’t explain why and she’s a therapist. Lakshmi and Maggie become friends but Lakshmi isn’t educated and her husband’s controlling. Maggie helps Lakshmi learn to drive and get some catering and cleaning work so she can have some independence. Then it bounces to India before Lakshmi married and moved here. The narration swaps between Maggie and Lakshmi. The Lakshmi chapters told in broken English. The author just didn’t progress any plot-line enough. I didn’t like or dislike either woman to care what became of them to finish the novel. That’s not good.
RATING: 1.5/5
–review by Amy Steele
<em>FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Harper Collins. </em>
purchase at Amazon: The Story Hour: A Novel
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TV review: The Lottery
Posted by Amy Steele in TV on July 17, 2014
It’s 2025. No one’s reproducing and no one knows why. In this dystopian future, women are no longer giving birth to children. Scientists successfully fertilized 100 embryos and a national lottery will decide who will be the surrogates. It’s a bit creepy and a lot strange.
Dr. Alison Lennon [Marley Shelton] is an intelligent, independent fertility specialist whose discovery may have life-and-death consequences. Michael Graziadei (American Horror Story) plays Kyle, a recovering alcoholic and single father of one of “the last six” the last biological children born in the country eight years ago. Since then he’s worked as a sperm donor having sex with ovulating women. Martin Donovan turns on the evil as a scheming government official willing to use any strategy to achieve his goals for what he considers the greater good.
When we first meet Dr. Lennon, she’s in a bar and picks up a guy and has sex with him. After he expresses his surprise at being picked up (she’d chosen him over a few better looking guys). She said that he was balding—a sign of high testosterone and also she suspected he had Somalian blood–also known for high fertility rates. He’s perplexed. She leaves.
The Lottery establishes a decent premise but could quickly get tired and cliché. The first episode proves quite compelling, promising. I’d like a more diverse cast for a futuristic and dystopian drama. The President is a white man in his 50s and the majority of the primary cast is white? Statistically, Caucasians will be the minority in the United States by 2025 and Latinos will be the majority. Where are the Latinos on this show?
The Lottery premieres Sunday, July 20, at 10pm ET/PT on Lifetime.
–review by Amy Steele
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book review: Fourth of July Creek
Posted by Amy Steele in Books on June 14, 2014
FOURTH OF JULY CREEK by Smith Henderson. Publisher: Ecco (May 2014). fiction. Hardcover. 480 pages. ISBN 978-0-06-228644-4.
“The mother collected unemployment but her full-time occupation was self-pity. She slippered around the house in sweatpants and smoked a lot of weed and took speed and tugged her hair over her face in a shape pleasing and temporary and dumped forth her old bosom and smiled prettily for herself and discovered nothing in the mirror to recommend her to anybody for anything.”
Fitting title for a painstakingly detailed novel about a social worker tasked to cover a rural, impoverished area in western Montana who encounters a survivalist battling everyone including the FBI. Sad, forlorn. Set in the 1980s. Provides insight into a social worker’s challenges and stressful existence.
Not surprisingly Pete Snow’s personal life is in near shambles. Pete drinks heavily as soon as his day ends. He has almost no relationship with his teen daughter and then his ex-wife moves off to Texas. Soon after, the estranged thirteen-year-old daughter runs away after a debauched party. Snow begins dating another social worker who lives in Missoula. She’s a product of the system herself, grew up in foster homes shuffled around and then decided to become someone who ideally helps others with lives as difficult as hers. Of course that’s the goal.
“Sexual deviancy came as little surprise anymore. Nymphomania, satyriasis, pedophilia, coprophilia, telephone scatologia—there wasn’t a particular paraphiliac that hadn’t crossed Pet’s path at one time or another.”
Smith Henderson writes the darkest, harshest, extreme scenarios. The central focus remains the erratic, strange Jeremiah Pearl—secluded in a wooded area. He’s stockpiled and barricaded and waits for some sign, some end of everything, the apocalypse. Pearl harbors strange ideologies and remains averse to any government intervention including when Snow tries to assist Pearl’s son. Jeremiah pushes Snow away repeatedly but Snow keeps coming back undeterred.
“He drove his Corolla with the windows down, but pumped them back when mammatus clouds popcorned over the Flathead Valley and gumdrops of rain began to splash his windows. He turned onto Highway 28 and the clouds quit raining altogether and shortly thereafter broke up like a crowd after a fistfight.”
Excellent writing but I struggled through large chunks. While initially pulled in by impressive descriptions and turns of phrase, the story lagged and side-plots drew me astray. I mainly just wanted to find out what would happen with the survivalist. Would there be a Waco-style ending?
RATING: 3.5/5
–review by Amy Steele
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Harper Collins.
purchase at Amazon: Fourth of July Creek: A Novel
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book review: Dancing Fish and Ammonites
Posted by Amy Steele in Books on February 1, 2014
Dancing Fish and Ammonites by Penelope Lively. Publisher: Viking (February 10, 2014). Memoir. Hardcover. 234 pages. ISBN 9780670016556.
“A lifetime is embedded; it does not float free, it is tethered—to certain decades, to places, to people. It has a context; each departure leaves a person-shaped void—the absence within a family, the presence lost within a house, in a community, in society itself.”
Penelope Lively begins “This is not quite a memoir. Rather, it is the view from old age.” And that’s exactly right. Aging happens to almost everyone. It’s unavoidable and inevitable unless of course you die young. Lively reminisces quite a bit in this memoir but strikes a balance, not dwelling too much on one subject or another. Lively spent her childhood in Egypt, attended boarding school, then college in England and wrote dozens of novels [for which she won many awards— including the Booker Prize]. The writing itself isn’t terribly organized or edited although she divides her memoir into sections: Old Age; Life and Times; Memory; Reading and Writing; and Six Things. At 80-years-old, Lively makes astute observations though can wander off on rambling tangents too often.
I simply didn’t care for several sections in this pithy memoir—one which dealt two much on her WWII memories and one from which she chose her title. She describes several objects which hold special meaning for her. It fell a bit flat particularly after an intriguing portion on reading and writing. In the best parts she describes what influenced writing many novels as well as favorite books and authors. She humorously writes about the technology gap as someone gets disappointed when the smart phone purchase is for her not her grandchild or her granddaughter asked her to put a ribbon into her “vintage” typewriter. Also most times she discussed [non-wartime] London delighted me. Perhaps I’d have appreciated this memoir if I’d been better acquainted with Lively’s fiction writing and I’m apologetic that I’ve only read Moon Tiger. I have several others like Consequences on my bookshelves, waiting to be read. Since it’s a quick read, it’s worth reading, particularly for avid readers and writers, as Lively provides some interesting anecdotes and meditations.
On aging:
“We have to get used to being the person we are, the person we have always been, but encumbered now, with various indignities and disabilities, shoved as it were into some new incarnation.”
On writing:
“I am a diarist. It is a working diary, mainly, in which I jot down stuff that might possibly come in useful at some point.”
On reading:
“I can measure my life out in books. They stand along the way like signposts: the moments of absorption and empathy and direction and enlightenment and sheer pleasure.
“We read to bond, to oblige, to discover how someone else reads. And read to persuade, to agree or disagree.”
RATING: ***/5
–review by Amy Steele
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Viking.
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The Wrong Girl: book review
Posted by Amy Steele in Books on September 15, 2013
The Wrong Girl by Hank Phillippi Ryan. Publisher: Forge (September 2013). Suspense/Thriller. Hardcover. 368 pages. ISBN 978-0-7653-3258-5.
“Jane kept up her smile. She was tired of explaining why she’d been fired, and even more tired of accepting sympathy and support because she had protected a source. It was over, she had a new job, she was happy happy happy. And as she so often heard, nobody watched local TV anymore. Which, truth be told, made her even happier.”
Thrillers might be the most popular genre in fiction after romance novels. So what makes this one stand out? A smart protagonist, Jane Ryland, works as a print journalist, not a medical examiner or private investigator or federal agent or police officer. She’s attractive yet not look-obsessed, relationship-obsessed or baby-obsessed. Her number one source is a police detective. Jake Brogan’s super-smart (Ivy-league educated) and handsome. There’s certainly a spark between Jane and Jake yet they’ve not done anything for fear it’ll jeopardize their careers. Author Hank Phillippi Ryan vividly describes Boston using her targeted knowledge of the city’s neighborhoods and intricate workings that keep the municipalities running day to day.
An ex-colleague at Jane’s newspaper arrives at her apartment in distress. She feels that the adoption agency sent her to a woman who can’t possibly be her birth mother. After taking a few steps back to consider the familiarly of their relationship (it’s strictly a working one), Jane decides it could be a possible story and decides to tag along with Tucker to find out more information about what might be going on. It turns out that Tucker may have been right to question her uneasiness at the meeting with her supposed birth mother. As Jane delves deeper into this adoption agency, she finds something menacing behind the beneficence.
Meanwhile Jake’s caught not one but two murders. One, a single mother of two children. He also finds a crib at the apartment where she’s murdered which completely befuddles him and leads the case in an unusual direction. The other case finds him crossing paths with Jane. A woman murdered, staged to look like a suicide, runs the private adoption agency that placed Tucker so many years ago.
Weaving together people and places by providing the ideal details and twists to keep questions flowing and keeping you wondering what exactly might be going on, Phillippi Ryan wrote a winner. She’s an amazing investigative journalist demonstrated by the creative manner in which she creates fascinating characters and concocts a disconcerting, riveting mystery. The Wrong Girl is an absolute page-turner that’ll keep you up late into the night.
RATING: ****/5
–review by Amy Steele
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from the publisher.
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Big Brother: book review
Posted by Amy Steele in Books on September 2, 2013
Big Brother by Lionel Shriver. Publisher: Harper (2013). Contemporary fiction. Hardcover. 384 pages. ISBN: 9780061458576.
“But what or rather who, is the skinny? By conceit, the rail-thin are harsh, joyless, and critical. They suffer from the same chronic dissatisfaction as average-size people, but on top of applying a ruthless ruler to themselves they are reliably dissatisfied with you. Their proclivity for self-control inexorably bleeds into controlling everyone else as well. . .Scrawnies are superior, haughty, and elitist.
Lastly, the well and truly fat. I think we long ago put to rest their reputation for jollity. Misery, more like it. Melancholy, perhaps. Helplessness. Self-indulgence and self-deceit. Defensiveness. Resignation to the present; fatalism about the future.”
Lionel Shriver expresses so many thoughts about obesity epidemic, how we indulge, how food is a treat, a central focus for holidays, outings, dates, meetings etc. [“Gathering were tagged by whatever you might put in your mouth; let’s have coffee, get together for a drink, do dinner some night.”] Also how people look at obese people and can rarely see beyond the body to the personality. When Pandora picks up her brother at the airport, the once handsome and assured Edison now weighs nearly 400 pounds. She’s understandably shocked and saddened at the sight. He’s unhealthy and nearly unrecognizable. Quickly she decides that she’ll help her brother lose the weight with an extreme weight loss plan. They move into an apartment together at her husband’s utter disapproval. Mainly because she says she’s giving the diet a year and needs to live with Edison in order for it to work as he needs her full encouragement and support.
Long in the shadows of her celebrity father [he starred on a sitcom in the 80s] and her high-school dropout jazz musician brother Edison, 40-year-old Pandora became an extremely successful female entrepreneur. After folding her catering business after 11 years, she started this strange boutique company that manufactures one-of-a-kind dolls called “Baby Monotonous”– pick a doll and have a voice installed which mimics a friend or loved one. Her husband works from home on his unpopular handcrafted furniture.
Not only does her husband dislike Edison but there’s perhaps jealousy in the brother-sister relationship vs. the husband-wife. Stepdaughter Cody likes Edison but stepson Tanner isn’t that keen. Tanner however isn’t sure he wants to graduate from high school and before Edison arrived on the scene he hadn’t planned to go to college even though Pandora saved money for him to go. [“Though already a month into his senior year of high school, he had yet to evince the slightest interest in the college education for which I was expressly saving the proceeds from my business. He wanted to write, but he didn’t like to read. That summer the boy had announced that he’d decided to become a screenwriter as if doing Ridley Scott a personal favor.”]
Pandora’s a striking character. Independent. Unique. Goals but not too driven. Just right and completely a woman to whom I could relate. Chose not to have children. Didn’t get married until after 35. Not clinging to men surrounding her. No awkward begging for her husband to give her second chances. She’s successful and the primary money source. Equally riveting is Edison in his disgustingness. He’s so over the top with his narcissistic attitude. He needs to be the center. He needs the attention. He needs it all but he left home at 17 with no plan and honestly what kind of outcome did he expect without an education or some sort of training.
Of course her brother gets comfortable living with and relying on her to maintain his weight loss. He also starts getting more confident in his weight loss despite the unhealthy diet. He’s been a drug addict and now Pandora worries what will happen when this diet ends. Will he just gain all the weight back? Can Edison maintain the weight loss without Pandora in his life? Shriver thinks about every possibility and every angle. I didn’t want this to end. Dazzling writing, vocabulary and character creation up until the ending. Why that disappointing ending?
RATING: ****/5 [only because I didn’t like the ending]
–review by Amy Steele
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from the Harper Collins.
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Luray: music review
Posted by Amy Steele in Music on August 27, 2013
This Washington, D.C.-based bluegrassy, ethereal [banjo-driven folk]/ Americana band revolves around singer/songwriter Shannon Carey’s gentle, sun-kissed vocals and diverse banjo playing. On the magical, glorious title track Carey sings in subdued style then hits an exquisite high note at the chorus. This song sounds the mellowest and most electric at the same time, keyboards and guitar being central instruments. “Kalorama” [a section of D.C.’s Adams Morgan] sounds distinctly alt-country while “Already There” shimmers with a sweet banjo twang and kicky beat. “Tidalground” features a more atmospheric sound and swirly vocals. From the first note of “Crying,” you’ll feel like you’ve hit the road in cowboy boots. When something seems inherently simple it can’t possibly be. Carey possesses the songwriting abilities and vocal range for Luray to straddle several genres while maintaining its own sound. Even though her brother Sean (S. Carey of Bon Iver—a more brooding indie band) produced the album, Shannon clearly prefers singing and writing songs with happier vibes. Think fresh air, blue skies, paddles dipping into cool water, trail mixes, reading on a hammock and long winding hikes.
–by Amy Steele
The Wilder
Release date: August 27, 2013
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Lifetime TV movie review: Restless Virgins
Posted by Amy Steele in Books, TV on March 9, 2013
Toward the end of Restless Virgins, Emily (Vanessa Marano), in recalling the event that forever changed her senior year at Sutton Academy, says: “I believed the fairytale of what Sutton should be instead of what it was.” Such true words for a mostly wise and prescient young woman challenged by fitting in and finding her place in a world that generally values looks over intellect; athleticism over compassion. As a scholarship student and local Emily stands out. She also edits the school paper where she writes feminist articles about female repression and slut shaming.
Similar to other pressure cooker boarding schools, Sutton Academy is a Boston-area prep school filled with Ivy League (or other top tier colleges) bound students, many already part of legacies. Popular senior girls are dubbed “the elites.” The jocks get the girls. On a normal class day lacrosse players judge the girls walking to class by holding up signs with numbers on them. When are boys going to realize that it’s wrong to judge girls? Maybe as soon as society/ men/ adults realize it’s not okay to judge anyone based on looks?
When Madison holds a massive party and then has some issues Emily’s the one to talk with Madison about it while her supposed peer group merely laughs and gossips in the background. At this party Emily rekindles her crush on lacrosse player Lucas (Max Lloyd-Jones), a super sweetie who transferred to Sutton from Nebraska his junior year. He recently broke up with some popular elite. His teammates, led by ultimate jock Dylan (Charlie Carver) mock him because he’s still a virgin. The lacrosse players think Emily’s ugly and taunt him about hooking up with her at the party. He secretly continues to get to know her. Compared to the rest of the lax team, Lucas is ultra-sensitive. Must be those mid-Western values. Could be that he doesn’t have much money and he values everything he gets more than his prep school classmates who’ve grown up with everything they’ve ever wanted.
this is only still Lifetime has of the couple– not studying in library or holding hands at carnival or kissing sweetly under umbrella
Emily and Lucas proceed to have the sweetest high school romance ever. They’re having exactly what you’d want to have or exactly what you would’ve wanted to have. It’s just that perfect. Vanessa Marano and Max Lloyd-Jones have the best chemistry.
Lacrosse captain Dylan decides that this year’s senior hand-off, a Sutton tradition, will be epic. He wants to make a sex tape. Here’s where the formula: Testosterone+athletics+prep schools+privilege+peer pressure=disaster. They plan to get some girls to meet them in the athletic center. They’ll tape it and pass it to the juniors. When it happens. The five players can’t believe what this girl did to them and watch it over and over again. They blur out their faces. Then one of the players tells another and someone sends it to Emily who posts it on the newspaper site. It goes viral. She’s called in to see the Dean who threatens to suspend her.
When the lacrosse team’s questioned Dylan calls his Senator dad (Timothy Busfield) and suddenly payouts get offered. Emily and Lucas’s relationship becomes threatened. How much is it worth to keep your mouth shut or let the truth be known? Does tradition trump humanity? Does privilege override compassion and what treating someone right? [How much is it worth to stop exploiting women and to stop treating women as objects?]
Lucas: “What have they ever done to you?”
Emily: “Other than rating me based on my looks and making this a hostile environment?”
Based on the amazing and disturbing nonfiction book by Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley, Restless Virgins is based on actual events at Milton Academy during the 2004-5 academic term. The film is executive produced by Michael Roiff (Waitress–one of my all-time favorite films) and produced by Harvey Kahn (She Made Them Do It) and directed by Jason LaPeyre (I Declare War). The superb cast and compelling script by Andrew Cochran (Adult World) make it a movie well worth tuning into. The subject matter is one always worth contemplating and discussing.
–review by Amy Steele
RESTLESS VIRGINS premieres SATURDAY, MARCH 9 AT 8 PM ON LIFETIME.
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About Me
covering mostly music and books. focus on alternative/indie and women in music, literature and the arts. feminist. vegan. mostly alternative, a bit bohemian. Masters in journalism from Boston University. BA from Simmons College.
Entertainment Realm by Amy Steele is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at entertainmentrealm.comCopyright © 2009. All writing, unless otherwise noted, by Amy Steele.
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